My oh my! After two years and five months of a coalition government, not even a Tory government, Ed Balls has reinvented himself as Stafford Cripps, and sees his future as one of pulling Britain out of ‘post-war austerity’. Does he seriously imagine that the coalition government has done as much damage to Britain as the Luftwaffe achieved in five years?

The coalition government contains some 20 ministers of the limp handshake variety, otherwise known as Lib-Dems, the very same people that Gordon Brown and his entourage of hangers on, Balls & co, to name a few, were prepared to hand ‘the moon on a stick to’ in an effort to absorb their policies into a Lib-Dem-Labour coalition. It would have been an incredibly shaky coalition, had it come to fruition. One that relied on every fringe maverick in parliament to agree to Balls’ demands in order to keep the show on the road.

Be that as it may, Balls has bounced back again at the Labour party conference with a speech announcing just how he will undo the damage he thinks has been done to the economy by a combination of ‘global fiscal meltdown’ and the hated Tory toffs. Nothing to do with the massive overspend of monies they had not yet earned. Goodness me no.

“Many people have said over recent weeks: ‘This has been Britain’s greatest ever summer.’

“But let me remind you of an even greater summer still: the summer of 1945 – the end of six hard years of war – when our nation welcomed its heroes home from the battlefields of Europe, Asia and the Atlantic, and celebrated together the defeat of fascism.

“Conference, our predecessors were elected that year to rebuild a country ravaged by conflict.

“They faced even greater challenges than we face today: an economy enfeebled by war, a national debt double the size of ours today. And they made tough and unpopular decisions: to continue with rationing, to cut defence spending and to introduce prescription charges.

He has his eye on the £3 billion that the government have not yet earned, but might do, from the 4G sell off. Pie in the sky at this stage, but it matters not, for the masterful Balls has already turned £2.5 billion of it into 100,000 houses, more impressive than feeding a mere 5,000 people with five little fishes… Wickes superstore must be cutting their prices dramatically, and builders working for 53 groats a month if he can build houses for £25,000 each! Perhaps he is really invoking the spirit of the Attlee government and intends to provide war time pre-fab housing.  That’ll go down well with the entitlement society.

If his grasp of mathematics and economics appears shaky, how about his grasp of history? He says that he cannot provide details of which cuts he would make, but referred instead to:

‘ The tough decisions taken by the Attlee government in 1945, such as continuing rationing, cutting defence spending and introducing prescription charges.’

Quite remarkable! Attlee introduced prescription charges a full three years before the NHS was born? Prescription charges didn’t come in until 1952. Does anybody actually proof read these speeches?

Brown and Balls – ‘the sorcerers apprentice’ – turned public spending into near 50% of every pound worked for by the usefully employed. They spent four pounds every time they got their mits on three pounds – leaving an IOU to cover the difference. They turned near 50% of the population into addicts in Chris’s memorable phrase. Like the ultimate DIY disaster zones, they took the roof off the house, removed the windows, and then blamed the chill wind blowing in from America for the fact that we were all left shivering.  Nothing to do with us Guv! It’s that wind wot’s making you cold.

Now he would have us believe that its not actually the wind that is the problem – it’s the speed the builders are working at to put the roof back on…

Rationing bananas might have got the Attlee government back on track, I think the UK might need a more profound economic policy than that.

MTG October 4, 2012 at 09:29

“Does he seriously imagine that the coalition government has done as much
damage to Britain as the Luftwaffe achieved in five years?”

I must return to this when my laughter subsides.

Brian, follower of
Deornoth October 3, 2012 at 22:10

“Colm Brogan asked how it was that despite Sir Stafford Cripps being a
highly intelligent, deeply honest, Christian man, wherever he trod the grass
never grew again.”

Pat October 3, 2012 at 22:06

“The tough decisions taken by the Attlee government in 1945, such as
continuing rationing, cutting defence spending” and running a budget
surplus.
So why didn’t they do it last time?

Ancient + Tattered
Airman. October 3, 2012 at 21:00

Bomber Harris called Stafford Cripps ‘Stifford Crapps’. I wonder why?

davidb October 3, 2012 at 20:50

But will Anna be ethnically cleansed from the French Soviet now the war
against fascism has been won over there?

Pretty much all our politicians are balloons these days, and the more I see
of Tweedledum and Tweedledummer on the telly the happier I am that Labour are
not getting back any time soon. Take a look at the vid on Guido from BBC
Breakfast today. Pure amateurism from the millionaire son of the illegal
immigrant. He’s Kinnock without the authority and the class.

How will they be able to run an election campaign with no appearances from
the candidate?

Oh, and Labour in Scotland are questioning the free prescriptions here.
Maybe they are taking the mong vote for granted. Whatever next, no more mass
importation of deprived ethnic constituents?

jaded October 3, 2012 at 17:59

How Milliband and Balls have the cheek to explain how they would put the
country straight when they were in the last government that got us in this
mess we are in.They should be on their knees begging for
forgiveness.
However the electorate are so stupid they are bound to win
next time.The Tories couldn’t score with an open goal.

cascadian October 3, 2012 at 17:54

Nobody should be surprised that Ed Bollocks solution to the deficit is to
spend money not yet earned, it is what he and liebour have always done, but I
have the feeling that mister Ed may have unwittingly stumbled on a couple of
cost saving measures.

Bringing the troops home would be worthwhile, after the embarrassments in
Iraq and now Afghanistan and Libya it should be understood that Britain’s days
of pretending it is a world power is over, save the squaddies lives and a ton
of money.

While nostalgia for post-war austerity is popular, perhaps the liebour
party could usefully spend some time reviewing the welfare state to see if its
aims have been met. A useful starting point might be a re-read of the
Beveridge Report (which is the foundation of much of the welfare state) it
outlined five giant evils to be tackled, and indeed the welfare state tackled
four of them vigorously (and at great expense), curiously the other giant evil
has been ignored, that evil is IDLENESS. The report writers had identified
that the welfare state could induce a person to be quite comfortable
collecting welfare and might encourage people not to retrain after jobs are
made redundant by technology, sound familiar? It should, it has spawned
several generations of feckless addicts as Chris recently described them.

Too bad Georgie Osborne , did not think of that.

Cynical Observer
October 3, 2012 at 16:44

wryly *sigh* That’ll teach me for creeping

Cynical Observer
October 3, 2012 at 16:39

Brilliant Anna. Thank you. I may have given the impression in previous
posts that I hold a candle for the socialists. Well actually I would – under a
fuse that leads to a f*cking powder keg at Labour HQ. Note to the lawyers
salivating at the bit – ONLY JOKING.

As regards: “Perhaps he is really invoking the spirit of the Attlee
government and intends to provide war time pre-fab housing. That’ll go down
well with the entitlement society.” They won’t be for “the entitlement
society”, they’ll be for the widows that need to be kicked out those big empty
houses that they selfishly cling onto (as wrly noted by your good self in an
earlier post!).

Mudplugger October 3, 2012 at 15:30

The current set of circumstances is so overwhelming that no text-book
offers a standard solution. The knee-jerk Tory response to cut costs, and thus
reduce immediate borrowing, has an attractive simplicity – until those cuts
reduce tax revenues and increase welfare costs to a point where further
borrowing is necessary, which is the Opposition’s argument.
Couple that
with the unpredictable outcome of the Euro-fiasco, the dead-hand of Eurocrats
on an increasing range of commerce, the diminishing of US financial power and
influence paralleled by the growth of Asia and the need to reconfigure our
national trade position to anticipate the new order of things, then those whom
we put into power have no realistic chance of getting it all right.
I
suspect there is no right answer, just rather a lot of wrong answers with
differing degrees of wrongness. Come the next election, we may all be voting
for those who will do the least harm, rather than those who will do the most
good, because we accept by then that none of them will actually do any good at
all – which is pretty depressing really.

cascadian October 3, 2012 at 18:08

“The current set of circumstances is so overwhelming that no text-book
offers a standard solution. “- Then throw the textbook away and use (dare I
say it) common sense.

Any decent manager can cut 5% from his annual budget without blinking,
can probably cut 10% without a loss of jobs and 25% with job losses and some
pain. At very short notice everybody at the Raccoon Arms could identify
totally useless departments of government that could be cut 100% with little
ill-effect, except to the addicts. Are we to believe that government is just
so special and complicated that the same cannot be done? What is missing is
the will to do anything, and the terror of offending a potential voting
bloc.

JimS October 3, 2012 at 10:24

Surely the magic 4G money is just a tax on phone companies and/or their
customers?

If the politicians believe all their rhetoric about the need for investment
in high-tech infrastructure then this is the last place they should be trying
to raise money from. It would be better to have no licence fees but to insists
that roll-out is speeded up and prices be dropped.

Spending money on new house building is just putting money into the pockets
of Polish plumbers, building houses for Polish immigrants, (insert your
favourite trade and EU nationality as desired).

Farenheit211 October 3, 2012 at 10:15

The only answer and the only way to boot the Establishment parties where it
hurts is for as many people as possible to vote almost anything but one of the
big three mainstream parties.

c777 October 3, 2012 at 09:00

The three main parties will soon be just a bad memory .
They have
wrecked the economy to the point of no return now.
The ensuing social
breakdown will finish them all for good.
Year zero here we
come.
Contemptible morons ,all of them.

Ancient + Tattered
Airman October 4, 2012 at 19:12

Let us hope for better times – preferably without civil war or the total
breakdown of society.

JuliaM October 3,
2012 at 08:46

“Does he seriously imagine that
the coalition government has done as much damage to Britain as
the Luftwaffe achieved in five years?”

If they don’t start making some real cuts soon, they might well
achieve it..

pils October 3, 2012 at 08:23

Cutting defence spending after the end of the Second World War? Who’d a
thunk it?